Field of the Disclosure
Aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to hydrocarbon production using artificial lift and, more particularly, to a technique for production enhancement with downhole monitoring for an artificial lift system, such as a reciprocating rod lift system.
Description of the Related Art
To obtain production fluids (e.g., hydrocarbons), a wellbore is drilled into the earth to intersect a productive formation. Upon reaching the productive formation, pumps can be used in wells to help bring production fluids from the productive formation to a wellhead located at the surface. This is often referred to as providing artificial lift, as the reservoir pressure may be insufficient for the production fluid to reach the surface on its own (i.e., natural lift).
Several artificial lift techniques are currently available to initiate and/or increase hydrocarbon production from drilled wells. These artificial lift techniques include rod pumping, plunger lift, gas lift, hydraulic lift, progressing cavity pumping, and electric submersible pumping, for example.
Matching reservoir inflow to the displacement (or lifting capacity) of an artificial lift system is a classical problem faced by oil and gas asset operators. Often, when a lift system is planned and designed, incomplete or inaccurate information is available, which leads to an overdesigned artificial lift system that does not perform optimally. Even when the available data is fairly complete and representative of the entire production system, over time the reservoir performance, fluid properties and/or system configuration may change, resulting in further mismatch between influx and displacement, leading to performance and efficiency degradation.
Operators use surface well test data, downhole pressure/temperature surveys, fluid level measurements, or combinations of the above to assess reservoir capabilities and attempt to diagnose causes and correct for the lift system malperformance. These approaches cause temporary production interruptions, at times costly downhole tool losses, and exposure of personnel to hazardous conditions. Such measurements are typically conducted for the shortest possible time to minimize interruptions and related losses, resulting in snapshots of potentially dynamic situations/systems. The data snapshots are entered into software tools, analysis is conducted, and desired settings are conveyed to field personnel or to field control systems. Such manual capture-process-analyze-implement cycles take considerable time and may call for well-trained analysts. Effectiveness of a particular implementation may not be analyzed until the next data capture cycle occurs.
Permanent downhole monitoring systems allow continuous, high-frequency measurement of critical system parameters such as pressure, temperature, vibration, and micro-seismic activities. Operators have traditionally shied away from the usage of permanent downhole monitoring systems, except for high value assets producing higher rates. Typically, the main reason for not using such systems in “low value/volume” wells has been the initial cost. Another and equally important reason has been the unavailability of data processing and analytical tools that provide implementable information instead of gigabytes of streamed and unmanageable data that operators have no time to handle.
Accordingly, what is needed are techniques and apparatus for analyzing monitored downhole data for production enhancement of an artificial lift system.